Issue with Ad Spending, Ads Results & Home Recommendation Visibility

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#1

Hi,

I’m reaching out because I’ve been experiencing some issues with the performance of our sponsored ads in Roblox Ads Manager. From what I’ve heard from other developers, it usually takes about two weeks of running daily sponsored ads to start showing up in the Home Recommendations and see an increase in players.

However, my team partner and I have been consistently running ads for the last 6-7 weeks, spending over 1,700 ad credits (roughly 40 ad credits daily, with a few additional spends here and there). Despite this, we haven’t noticed any increase in visibility through Home Recommendations, and our ad spend seems to be very low, regardless of what we bid.

Here are the specific concerns we’ve noticed:

Low Spending: Whether we bid 0.01, 0.05, or even 0.1 and higher, our campaigns aren’t spending the budget like they used to. For example, one of our recent campaigns only spent 0.06 over a 2-hour period, which is much lower than expected.

Lack of Visibility: Even after 6 weeks of daily advertising, we’re not seeing any change in visibility in the Home Recommendations or any improvement in the analytics.

Long Wait Without Results: After this extended period of ad spending, we still haven’t seen any noticeable boost in player ccu or engagement.

The amount of Robux we’ve invested in promoting our game, 6 weeks seems like a long time to go without seeing any real results. Could you let me know if this is a bug or if there’s something else going on that’s causing this issue? Or if it’s meant to be this way.

Expected behavior

If everything were working correctly, I would expect that after consistently running sponsored ads for 2 weeks or more, our game would begin appearing in the Home Recommendations section, leading to an increase in visibility and concurrent users (CCU). The ad budget should also be fully utilized based on our bids, ensuring that we’re getting the most exposure possible for the amount we’re spending.

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How to "get into the algorithm" / get a game to its playerbase?
#2

How do your analytics look? Much of what you’re describing can be an (intentional) result of poor retention and click-through.

#3

Our CTR is usually between 1-1.5%, which may not be the highest, but it’s typically enough to give us good results with CCU for each sponsor. However, the past 6 weeks have been terrible, and I feel like something else is going on.

At first, I thought it might be due to school starting, but I’m not sure if that’s the real cause. What really stands out is that one of our campaigns only spent 0.06 of the budget with a 0.05 bid after 2 HOURS! That’s extremely unusual, especially considering we’ve had better results with a 0.01 bid. In my previous sponsorships, ads would normally appear in the section within 15-20 minutes. But now, the ads only show up a few times and then stop showing on the sponsored section. The budget is being spent super slowly which doesn’t seem to be normal to me and it’s barely making any difference to our game. We don’t even notice our ccu spike no more. And that is what we need in order to grow and be shown more on the platform.

#4

Similar issue here. I can put around 20-50 daily USD budget and it barely spends any of it. I’ve been experimenting with different max bids but no luck so far.

#5

What about your other analytics? Retention, payer conversion, etc.?

As far as I’m aware these, along with CTR, are used to determine which games are recommended on home page. It’s also possible this impacts sponsorship - it hurts Roblox if they recommend low-performing games.

#6

I get the concern, but I’m not sure that fully explains what’s happening here. If the ads aren’t spending properly and our game isn’t getting the exposure it should, it’s almost impossible for us to improve retention or payer conversion. These metrics can’t improve without new players coming in, which is what sponsorship is supposed to help with.

Also, I don’t think it would make sense for Roblox to restrict low-performing games from being sponsored. The whole purpose of sponsorship is to give all games, even those that are newer or less popular, a chance to gain visibility. If only top-performing games were shown, smaller developers wouldn’t stand a chance to grow. There’s got to be a fair way for everyone to get their games out there.

The way our campaigns performed in the past, with similar metrics, was much better. So, I’m confident that something’s off here beyond just the retention and conversion rates.

#7

Having reviewed Roblox’s advertising documentation again… play-through rate is absolutely (and rightfully) considered when showing an ad. Other metrics are probably less important.

Remember that Roblox doesn’t charge by impression, it charges by play. If your sponsored game is played 4x less than other games, then Roblox is making less money when it shows your ad - even if you’re bidding 3x as much as anyone else. Roblox uses eCPM (effective cost per thousand impressions) to determine which ads to show, not actually the amount you bid.

Our CTR is usually between 1-1.5%

I am assuming you mean PTR/play-through rate here. If you actually mean CTR and your PTR is lower, then this example gets even more extreme…

You’re bidding 0.05 per play, and your play rate averages 1.25%. This is an average of 12 players per 1000 impressions, and Roblox would calculate an eCPM of 0.625 - in other words, Roblox thinks it’ll make an average of $0.625 for every thousand times it shows your game.

A top 10% game has a play rate of about 4%. That same game bidding $0.05 pays Roblox $2 for every thousand impressions… and for another calculation, that same game only has to bid $0.02 to earn Roblox $0.80 for every thousand impressions. They’re more valuable (and thus shown instead of your game) because they make Roblox more money, even with a lower bid than you.

But now, the ads only show up a few times and then stop showing on the sponsored section.

My theory is that Roblox is basically “testing” ads to get an up-to-date CPM. Every game does have a chance because Roblox will show it a few thousand times at the start of each campaign to calculate analytics. But after that, you’re on your own.

Try changing your thumbnail/icon and see if things improve.

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